How Would Jesus Haunt?

Last year, the Solomon’s Porch church put on a haunted house at 3604 Main called Nightmare. It included a scene of a girl sobbing on a bloody toilet and crying for her aborted baby. Then there was the car accident with bodies of teenagers still clutching beer cans amid twisted metal. In the final room, Nightmaregoers were greeted with a crucified Jesus and televisions broadcasting a prayerful message from Pastor Troy Covey.

This season, we have some suggestions that would scare even the most devout.
· Watch through a microscope as sacred stem cells wriggle and squirm to their deaths.

· A student asks his teacher where he can find the Ten Commandments. The teacher ignores him and begins reading from The Catcher in the Rye.

· Condoms rain from the ceiling of a pharmacy, and little girls are forced — forced — to take Plan B.

· Press buttons in a simulated Guantanamo Bay torture room and zap the hooded jihadists — it’s interactive!

· Liberals sip lattes, watch PBS on YouTube and discuss plans to burn the flag. In the back is a banner: “Welcome to ACLU Headquarters.”

· You’re trapped on a cruise ship listening to Michael Moore bash Operation Iraqi Freedom. As he speaks, he finishes off the last of the buffet.

· A couple opens a Christmas card. Their faces turn to horror when they read the card aloud: “Happy Holidays.” The man crumples the card and throws it on the floor. It shows atheists pissing on Santa Claus.

· In the final room, you find yourself in a wedding chapel. You walk toward the couple as a minister says, “You may kiss the bride.” The groom, Osama bin Laden, lifts the veil to reveal that the bride is … SpongeBob SquarePants!

New Border Wars

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt and House Speaker Rod Jetton recently took a trip to Arizona to see why immigration has become such a hot topic.

Jetton knows firsthand about this country’s exploding population of Hispanics. His native Madison County has seen its Hispanic population grow by 30 percent in recent years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Soon, the number of Hispanics in Madison County could top a whopping 100 — not quite 1 percent of the county’s 12,151 people.

So we called Jetton to see what he thinks of the border and his new Hispanic neighbors.

The Pitch: What did it look like down there?

Jetton: It’s a wide-open, high desert. You know, you can see for miles. Very dry. Very hot. And the border, where we were, in Yuma, is just an arbitrary line that just kind of runs through the desert….

Did you see any illegals trying to cross the border?

We did not. We did not. Uh, and evidently a lot of this happens at night. They move through, and it’s a little darker, so it’s easy to conceal yourself.

Do you favor a border fence?

After being down there, I definitely do. After being down there, I can see why it would be a good thing.

Should we have a fence around Missouri?

[Laughs] Well, I wouldn’t think we need that. And it’s kind of ironic. It’s kind of sad to think you need a fence. But it’s kind of a testament to democracy…. Last year, they arrested and detained 1.2 million people along the entire border. They had over 100 different countries represented by the people trying to sneak in: China, North Korea, a lot of Russia, Eastern European countries. And so I think, just from a terrorism standpoint, if I was a terrorist, and it’s getting harder to get into America from other areas, it would look like it was pretty simple to get to Mexico and then sneak on up through some of those uninhabited areas of that border.

Has the increase of Hispanics in Madison County influenced your opinion?

No, that hasn’t been an impact for me…. I would say what got me interested is this whole 9/11 terrorism aspect of these people trying to kill Americans, these, uh, Muslim extremists. And then the drug aspect of it. Quite frankly, a lot of people don’t like to hear it, but we need good workers in our state. In the whole nation, we’re short. I talk to business owners and companies all the time, and our unemployment rate is about as low as it can be…. If we can put the wall up and maybe come up with a little faster speed on processing them and letting them come in, then there’s no doubt, you know, we clearly need the workers.